


Bloodsap

by WolffyLuna



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Origins - Awakening
Genre: Australiana, F/F, Fluff, Food as a Metaphor for Love, Nature, Sigrun POV, Teaching
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-17
Updated: 2019-11-17
Packaged: 2020-12-28 20:14:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,946
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21142547
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WolffyLuna/pseuds/WolffyLuna
Summary: Velanna teaches Sigrun about the natural world.





	Bloodsap

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ChocoChipBiscuit](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChocoChipBiscuit/gifts).

> I hope you like this!

It was a lovely and lazy day, by Grey Warden standards. Grey Wardens did ‘lazy’ about as much as the Legion, but it was relatively lazy, and Sigrun would take that.

She, Aeducan, Anders and Velanna walked through the forests near Amaranthine towards a cluster of darkspawn about a day and a half away. When your problems were ‘there are darkspawn over there,’ and not ‘there are darkspawn near a population centre’ or ‘there are darkspawn right on top of you trying to eat your eyeballs’, that was pretty lazy in her book.

And sure, “An exiled princess, an escape artist human mage, an antisocial dalish mage and a dead gal go for a walk on the surface” sounded like the start to a dirty joke, at least the company wasn’t too bad.

Plus, the forest was pretty. Pretty in a foreign, alien way, all random and organic and blindingly bright, but still pretty.

Anders muttered. “We could be walking right into an ambush.”

Aeducan raised an eyebrow. “Are you sensing something I’m not? Maybe you’re better at sensing darkspawn than me, even with no experience. Stranger things have happened.”

Anders huffed. “I don’t have to like all this cover.”

“I’ve been in forests far denser than this, human,” said Velanna, with the same amount of venom as usual, but far more tact.

“Are there literal walls between you and the darkspawn? No? And trees are nicer than stone.” Okay, she could feel all her ancestors glaring at her for that. The trees were nicer than _unworked_ stone, how about that?

She paused in front of one of them. It grew grey and tall and branching, with blue green leaves that skimmed the forest floor. Thick grey bark clad it, with deep ruts and grooves, like a drunkard had taken a chisel to it. Sap oozed from it, like bubbling blood or bulbous rubies.

It was alien and weird and like nothing she had seen in her life underground—but it was beautiful. She skimmed her fingers over the rough bark, and poked the sticky sap.

Velanna paused behind her, evaluating the tree with her. “It is a bloodsap.”

Sigrun felt a spike of wonder, like the one time she’d heard an ore-reader talk, a thrill of ‘You know what this is? What wonders of learning!’

Velanna continued, as if she hadn’t seen her expression. “They are quite common.”

_Oh. _Right. Velanna had lived in forests all her life. She’d _seen trees_ _before_. It’d be weirder if she didn’t know what this one was. “It’s still pretty,” Sigrun said.

“Perhaps.” Velanna walked on, and Sigrun followed her, keeping her eyes on the tree for as long as she could.

* * *

Maybe Velanna had actually seen that little foolish thrill at her knowledge (which was a terrifying thought.) Every so often, as they walked, she would pause, and point at a plant. “That is black peppermint,” she’d say, pointing at a tree with narrow grey-green leaves and fibrous brown bark. “You can dye cloth with it’s bark.” Or she’d point at another “That is a red candleflower. When it blooms, the honeyeaters squabble over it.”

Her tone bordered on lecturing, even if each utterance was short enough it never got to that stage. But it wasn’t judgy or condescending. Sigrun had developed a keen ear for that. (“Hey duster, go away. Do you know what that means? G-O A-W-A…“) This was strictly educational, with a dash of concern that someone might not _know_ that, might somehow not know what any given plant was. It was like the hypothetical talk about the Carta she’d give Velanna-- who was in it, who you shouldn’t trust as far as you can toss, who you should really not offend—if she ever had the bad luck to end up in Orzammar.

While it wasn’t like she was ever going to need to know that you could tan leather with the golden wattle, it was nice to know. And it was nice to hear Velanna talk about something other than her fear for her sister, her hatred of humans, or something else similar bitter.

And who knows, maybe the best way to repel darkspawn involved tanned honeyeaters, and then she’d be well prepared.

* * *

Sigrun clambered out of her tent, hot and sweaty, into the chill night air. Being a Grey Warden was useful. The ability to sense the darkspawn hadn’t saved her hide yet, but she knew it would. And she knew it would help her protect others, help her make a worthy dent into the darkspawn.

But the visions in the middle of the night, of deep dark places beneath the deep roads, and the hot press of hordes, and the slow flow of taint beneath her skin was certainly not her _favourite_ part of being a Grey Warden.

She flopped back onto the grass a few metres from the tent. It was soft and cold and dewy under her night shirt, and the clumps dug in weird places. But it was better than being in her tent, in the stuffy darkness with leather that seemed too much like darkspawn flesh.

At least the sky was pretty tonight, bright and clear and cloudless, with no moon. (The fact that moon changed had given her a shock the first time she’d noticed, but now she was almost used to it.) The stars sparkled and shone across the black ink of the sky in a silver trail, like a layer of galena in shale.

It was beautiful-- especially compared to her new dreams of terror and death and Blight. 

She wasn’t going to fall asleep again tonight. Her heart still pounded against her rib cage, and the chill sweat clung all over her. Yeah, sleep was not happening. Staring at the sky was restful, or least she was going to count it as restful if anyone chided her for not getting enough sleep, don’cha know we’ve got a big day tomorrow--?

A few minutes, another tent opened, and someone padded towards her. She looked up over her shoulder at them.

Velanna walked over to her, red faced and breathing hard, and flopped down next to her.

Sigrun turned to face her. “You stargazing too?”

Up close, she could see that Velanna’s eyes were red and bloodshot. That probably wasn’t—good.

“What do you know about the stars?” Velanna asked, trying to deflect answering by asking a question of her own.

Sigrun shrugged. “They’re pretty. They happen at night.”

“No one has told you how to use them then?”

Sigrun huffed out a breath. “Who would have?”

Velanna rolled her shoulders, settling against the grass. She scanned the sky—trying to pick something to point out, something she could explain to someone who had seen the stars maybe two dozen times, tops.

She held out her hand, pointing at two bright stars with her index and pinkie finger. “Those are the pointer stars. If you draw a line against them—” her hand followed that line, cutting through them towards the horizon “—it will always point south.”

It was better than a compass—sure, it was only out at night, but the stars couldn’t point astray because of an iron lode nearby like a compass would. She meant to say that, but she couldn’t form it to anything that would be actually helpful to Velanna (when would she need to worry about iron lodes?) “Neat,” she said, because words were hard and she was not great at them. She pointed at the brightest star. “What’s that one good for? …is it good for anything?” Because the stars probably weren’t _all _useful (there were surely too many of them for that.)

“That is the Slow Traveller.” She paused, chewing her lip as she thought of whether to say anything more. “It was set by Fen’Harel, to lead those who are ignorant of navigation astray. It is bright, and it looks fixed night to night—but if you follow it, over the years you would be lead off course.”

“Well, I’m glad only one of them moves, then.”

Velanna frowned. “Most stars move.”

“…What?”

* * *

The darkspawn were at least easy to deal with. Sure, they were down a sinkhole, along one of the Deep Roads highways—but they were _down a sinkhole_. They couldn’t get out, or do much more than glare balefully as Velanna and Anders set them on fire. It was like shooting nugs in a mineshaft.

And there was none of the tell-tale tickle of Darkspawn as they walked back through the Deep roads towards the surface. (Grey Warden senses: so useful!)

It was hot with Thedas’ inner heat, dampe enough that condensation rolled down the walls and fungus grew all over. Fine black fungus, like coal dust grew speckled up against the ceiling, and brown and cream mushrooms poked out what little soil covered the floor.

And sticking out of the walls: a whole host of breadbrackets.

She hadn’t eaten one since she’d run from Kal’Hirol. They didn’t seem to grow on the surface, and how would haul them all the way up to the surface to _sell_ them?

She broke one off, and it came free of the wall with a satisfying snap. She wasn’t that hungry, but she didn’t care.

She bit into it, and it tasted of home.

It tasted like plaster, with a texture somewhere between leather and chalk dust.

When your home was Dusttown, something that tasted of home wouldn’t taste _good_. But she had some nostalgia for it, anyway. It reminded her of coming home, exhausted from begging, curling up in a threadbare blanket in front of a fire, and nibbling at a breadbracket, because it was the only edible thing that she could rely on to be in the house.

Velanna frowned, and walked faster towards her, looking concerned.

Sigrun held the fungus out to her, to let Velanna see. “It’s a breadbracket. They’re not _nice_, but they’re filling and you can eat ‘em—if you’re a dwarf, at least.”

Aeducan reached out and broke off one. “They’re a bit low class, but they have their charms.”

Sigrun rolled her eyes. “They taste like rock dust, and you know it.”

“Everything in the Deep Roads tastes of rock dust.”

Sigrun shook her head in a sarcastic manner. “And here I thought the royal household got good food.”

Velanna grabbed one, and tentatively nibbled at it. She made a face as soon as it hit her tongue. “It tastes like bark,” she said. She nibbled at it again. “More-ish bark.”

Sigrun bit off a chunk, smiling. “That’s one way to put it.”

* * *

They returned to Vigil’s Keep.

The pace of Velanna’s teaching slowed down, but it didn’t stop. One night it might be the story of a constellation, or a how to use that constellation to tell if there would be a frost that night. Another day she’d point at the grass that grew around the Keep, and say how it was good for weaving, and yet another day she’d come in from the forest with a basketful of sweet apple berries to share.

Velanna was—reserved, with most people, but now it seemed that to Sigrun that teaching her was less of an obligation (“I cannot leave someone _that_ ignorant, or they’ll end up naked and dead in the woods, and that would –_sigh_—be _bad_.”) to something enjoyable in and of itself.

It was odd.

It wasn’t like no one had ever taught her things before. Varlan had taught her to read—but she’d expected that to be a once off, brought on by boredom and proximity and just the right amount of shared danger. It seemed like luck beyond what she could ever hope for or deserve for it to happen _twice_.

She tried to make it worth it for Velanna, by being a fascinated and attentive student. It wasn’t hard. It was captivating learning about this strange new world that had been above her head, captivating watching Velanna get drawn into teaching her, opening up more and more. At some point she stopped having to work at it. It caught her attention with no effort at all, and she found herself bubbling with questions—could you weave with this other grass? Do cinnamon myrtle and apple berries go well together?

Velanna had smiled at that—small and subtle, but Sigrun noticed it. She was getting better at noticing it.

After dinner with the rest of the wardens, Velanna brought a bowl over to her. It was heady and fragrant, and filled with apple berries and crushed cinnamon myrtle soaking with wine.

They sat together on a window sill, picking at it together with forks as they watched the moon rise.

“We used to eat this at celebrations,” Velanna said. (Sigrun guessed the ‘we’ was her clan. It usually was.) “It took me a while to get the taste of this. I always found the wine too bitter.”

“It tastes incredibly sweet to me,” Sigrun said, because it was, because after a life of breadbrackets and salted nug, apple berries were an explosion of sugar and sweetness on her tongue, and wine and the cinnamon myrtle only made it more so.

Velanna stabbed a berry with a fork, and put it in her mouth, the juice dripping down her chin. “It is to me too, now that I am more used to the wine.”

Sigrun reached up with a thumb to wipe the juice off corner of Velanna’s mouth. It was automatic, she did it without thinking ‘maybe I shouldn’t do that’ until it was already done. They’d shared roads and tents, and bound each other’s wounds, and that had grown an intimacy between them—one that was maybe not as strong as to allow this.

(Back in the Legion, she could trust most Legionnaires to watch her back and try and stop Darkspawn from killing her. There had been less that she would trust herself to cry in front of. There were none she’d clean the face of, like an overly tidy aunt—and the Grey Wardens seemed much the same as the Legion.)

She tried to pull her hand back, apologising in Dwarven because that was still the first language that came to her--

Velanna held her hand by the wrist. Her calluses rubbed against the skin of her wrist, rough and warm. “No, it is alright. I—I do not mind.”

“That’s—that’s good.”

Sigrun extricated her hand, and turned back to their food, in an awkward silence. Like cats that had both just spotted the other about to pounce on then, and were trying not to look like they were doing what they just did. But more friendly-like, Sigrun hoped.

Velanna stared at her bowl, like she could divine the secrets of whether it would rain next tuesday by looking at the patterns of fruit. “How do people court in Orzammar?”

Sigrun shrugged. “I wouldn’t know. Nobles court. Noble-hunters court. But other dusters? We don’t.”

“How does one show—interest, in someone, then?”

Sigrun could guess where this conversation would lead. Or at least, where she hoped it would lead. Foolishly. Though maybe it was equally foolish to assume that Velanna must be asking purely out of cultural interest, and not interest in _her_. Or maybe it was foolish to think it was foolish to assume—_AAARRGGHH_. She shrugged. “It’s a fairly ‘hey, if we combine our incomes, we could afford food! Let’s do that!’ sort of thing,=.”

“And in the Legion?”

She laughed ruefully. “It’s even less formal than that. ‘Live fast, already be dead’ and all that stuff.” She looked at her bowl, and swirled the berries around in it.

Velanna cocked her head, to try and see her face. “And so to express interest in a romantic relationship, one would—?”

“Just say as much, if they could. Which, like—is that what you’re doing?” She look up at Velanna, eyebrow raised. “Am I reading this right?” Which, well, she hoped she was. Velanna was a cold nug—but a nice cold nug, who liked her and taught and treated her like she was at least person-like.

“If you would also be interested.”

“Yes!” And because it seemed like her night for displays of affection that moved too fast, she leaned forward and kissed the corner of Velanna’s mouth, where she’d wiped her thumb, and tasted wine and cinnamon myrtle.

Velanna twisted her head, to get her mouth on Sigrun’s. She pressed too hard and little awkwardly, but she wasn’t a _bad _kisser, and anyway, Sigrun was more than happy to assist in her education.

Sigrun nipped lightly at the bottom of Velanna’s lip.

Velanna leaned forward—

\--and her bowl fell out her lap, and smacked onto the floor. It didn’t break, but a chip flew off, and wine and apple berries spilled over the floor.

In the past, Sigrun would have been upset about the wasted food, all that effort for nothing except falling on the floor, and she imagined that Velanna would have felt the same way.

But now? She laughed. Because being such a distracted lovenug that you knocked over a plate was funny, as was the way the ceramic chip bounced on the floor.

Velanna laughed too, a quiet, closed mouth giggle.

Sigrun raised an eyebrow, and tried to sound serious and not like she was cracking up. “Hey, what are you laughing at?”

“Noth—”

Sigrun shut her up with a kiss on the cheek, which lead to Velanna laughing harder.

Velanna kissed her forehead as revenge.

They spent the next few minutes, alternating laughing and kissing as the wine soaked into the floor.

<hr>

**Author's Note:**

> So, most things mentioned in this fic are real or based off real things, with the exceptions of breadbrackets, nugs, and the Slow Traveller. Attempts were made to keep things ecologically consistent-- but not successful attempts. Fereldan in this fic is much more tableland-y rainforest-y than it should be.
> 
> Bloodsap is based off the ironbark tree... just with the name changed, because the Dragon Age writers got there first and it would have been confusing. 
> 
> Red candleflower is another common name for some banskia flowers. 
> 
> Galena is a silvery mineral, that can (relatively) often be found in between layers of black shale. If the rocks get folded, it can make quite a pretty affect that [can look a bit like the milky way if you squint.](https://external-preview.redd.it/7M-KHkE0msq3Qb7TrJKvwlhuDpSktugy4lUk6gYoNa8.jpg?width=960&crop=smart&auto=webp&s=b8ace3ca017488a9031174e00962f4d4b17d63f8)
> 
> The two pointer stars are based off Alpha and Beta Centauri, which you can actually use to find south (in conjunction with the Southern Cross.)
> 
> You can use the Pleiades/Seven Sisters to predict frost. They tend to be brighter/clearer on frosty nights. 
> 
> Apple berries and cinnamon myrtle are real plants, that you can really eat-- but I'm not sure whether you're meant to _crush_ cinammon myrtle, or if apple beries and cinammon myrtle actually taste good together. (I imagine they would? Don't know for sure though.) I have no idea what the wine is made out of. (Presumably grapes got imported/introduced to Fereldan?)


End file.
